You've probably seen the Verizon
ad of a guy riding his bike in San Francisco along a route that looks
like a big heart. The guy was actually real and he did actually ride his
bike all over the city like that.

Robert Krulwich of NPR tells the story of Payam Rajabi and how he landed
a spot in the ad:

Last year, Payam Rajabi got a new job and had to leave Toronto and
his girlfriend Clare and move to San Francisco. All that left him feeling
a little down — until he came up with his upsy, downsy Valentine
idea.

He jumped on his bike, opened his iPhone to a map of San Francisco,
and tracking himself with a GPS, he rode 27 miles around the city, taking
two and a half hours, burning 1,135 calories and carefully etching a
heart shape onto a city map ...

[...] Payam's map got picked up by Cyclelicious, a geeky bike equipment
site, by Uptown Almanac, a local blog, by Health 2.0, a health news
site, by Iranian.com, a Persian-American site. Payam was named "Iranian
of the Day," and within the year, ka-ching! An ad agency called.

It was Verizon. They asked Payam if he would get back on the bike and
do the whole thing over again, this time tracked by a rigged out truck
with a giraffe-like hi-cam

But there's a twist at the end ... Read the rest over at Krulwich Wonders:
Link